Every year a set of articles appears ranking Schengen countries by how easily they hand out visas. Iceland tops most of them. Latvia and Lithuania are usually close behind. The numbers are real: those consulates approve well over 95% of what lands on their desk, against a Schengen-wide average of 85.4%. (Approval and refusal rates are published annually by the European Commission in its visa policy statistics; the figures here are the 2025 set.)
The articles rarely mention the part that decides the outcome for most people, which is that you do not get to pick. The country you apply to is determined by your itinerary, not your preference, and the consulates check.
So this piece is in two halves. First, the rule that assigns you a consulate. Then, honestly, the narrow set of situations where you do have a choice — and what to do with it.
The Rule That Decides For You
There are two tests, applied in order. Both come from Article 5 of the EU Visa Code, which is the regulation your consulate is applying, and it is worth knowing that it is law rather than house policy.
The main destination test. You apply to the country where you will spend the most nights. If your trip is eight nights in Spain and two in Portugal, you apply to Spain. This holds even if the Portuguese consulate would be quicker, friendlier, or has appointments next Tuesday.
The first entry test. If no single country is the clear main destination — you are splitting time roughly evenly — you apply to whichever country you land in first. Four nights in Belgium and four in the Netherlands, flying into Brussels, means Belgium.
Getting this wrong is one of the most common causes of delay we see. The consulate does not usually refuse you outright for it. What happens instead is that your file sits, someone eventually notices the flight bookings do not support the application, and it comes back to you weeks later with a request to reapply elsewhere. By then your appointment slot is gone and so, often, is the trip.
The reason consulates take this seriously is that the country issuing your visa carries responsibility for you inside the Schengen area. It is not a formality they are inclined to be flexible about.
Where the Approval Numbers Actually Come From
The 2025 figures across the whole Schengen system, as published by the European Commission: 12.2 million applications, 10.3 million approved, 1.73 million refused. That is a 14.6% refusal rate overall.
The spread underneath that average is wide.
| Consulate group | Approximate approval rate | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Iceland | 93–96% | Very low application volume, few high-risk files |
| Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia | 95%+ | Small consulates, mostly straightforward tourism |
| Germany, Netherlands | High-80s to low-90s | High volume but efficient, consistent processing |
| Spain | ~85% | Sits almost exactly on the Schengen average |
| France, Italy | Lower, and slower in season | Enormous volume, heavy summer backlog |
The pattern is not that Iceland is lenient. It is that Iceland receives a fraction of the applications France does, and the ones it receives skew towards well-documented tourism from low-risk countries. A consulate handling 400 applications a month can look at each one properly. A consulate handling 40,000 cannot.
That matters for how you read the table. A high approval rate is partly a statement about the applicant pool, not just the consulate's generosity. Your own file is judged on its contents either way.
When You Genuinely Do Have a Choice
Three situations, and they are more common than the strict reading of the rules suggests.
A genuinely even split. If you are spending three nights in Austria, three in Slovenia and three in Croatia, no country is the main destination. The first entry test kicks in — but you control where you fly into. Booking Ljubljana rather than Vienna as your arrival point is a legitimate way to route the application to a consulate with better availability. You are not gaming anything; you are choosing an itinerary, and the visa follows it.
A multi-country trip with no accommodation anchor. Sailing itineraries and driving tours often have no single dominant country. We handle a fair number of charter clients whose week starts in Italy and ends in Croatia. In practice the consulate will accept a reasonable interpretation as long as your bookings back it up consistently.
A repeat traveller with history. If you have held two or three previous Schengen visas and used them properly, you are a materially easier file anywhere. The advantage of a "high approval" consulate shrinks, because you are no longer the marginal case those statistics are describing.
If none of these describe your trip, the honest answer is that the easiest consulate for you is the one your itinerary points at, and the useful work is in the file rather than the choice of country. We wrote about what actually gets applications refused in Why Schengen Visa Applications Get Refused.
What To Do Once You Know Your Consulate
Book the appointment before you finish the paperwork. This inverts how most people work, and it is the single most useful thing in this article. Slots at the London visa application centres for France, Spain, Italy and Greece are routinely gone four to eight weeks out, and longer between April and July. The documents take an evening. The appointment can take a month to obtain. Get the slot, then assemble the file against that date. More on the mechanics in How to Get a Schengen Visa on Time.
Check whether your consulate uses TLScontact or VFS Global. They are different companies with different booking systems, different release patterns and different service fees on top of the €90 visa fee. France uses TLScontact in London. Spain and Italy use different centres again. Knowing which one you are dealing with before you start saves a wasted evening.
Apply no earlier than six months before travel, and no later than 15 days. The six-month window opened up in 2022 and most people still work to the old three-month figure. If you know your dates in February for a July trip, you can apply in February, and in a year where appointments are scarce that is worth doing.
Match every date across every document. Flights, hotels, insurance and the application form all need to agree. This sounds obvious. It is the most common reason files come back.
The Honest Summary
If you have a real choice, Iceland and the Baltic consulates are demonstrably the easiest route into Schengen, and Germany and the Netherlands are the best combination of volume and speed among the larger countries.
Most people do not have that choice, and chasing it is a poor use of attention. A well-assembled application to the French consulate succeeds far more often than a thin one to Iceland. The 14.6% who get refused are, in the large majority of cases, refused on the contents of the file rather than the postcode of the embassy.
If you would rather not learn the difference between TLScontact and VFS Global by trial and error, this is one of the things we do. Message us with your dates and where you are going, and we will tell you which consulate you need, what the current appointment situation there looks like, and what your file needs to contain. From £100 per request, and we will say plainly if you do not need us.